Flurry of dramatic leads leaves plane’s fate unsolved

Another day, another dramatic “breakthrough” — but still no sign of the missing plane.

First, search planes spotted oil slicks off the coast of Vietnam, but they didn’t contain jet fuel from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. Then the revelation that two Iranian passengers had been traveling on stolen passports sparked “terrorism concerns” — until investigators concluded they may have just been immigrants seeking asylum. And Chinese satellites detected debris Wednesday in the South China Sea, but then … you get the idea.

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On Thursday, everybody was buzzing about a Wall Street Journal story that said engine data showed the Boeing 777 could have flown for four hours — enough to carry it as far as India or Pakistan — after losing communication with air traffic control.

Malaysia’s top transportation official dismissed the story as “inaccurate,” although his government’s track record in providing information about the search has proven less than stellar. Meanwhile, the Journal corrected its story to say the data had come from the plane’s satellite-communication link, not the engines.

With each stunning revelation that fizzles a few hours later, theories about the fate of the missing plane continue to multiply — ranging from hypotheses about an elaborate terrorist plot to the most prosaic possibility, that the jet simply crashed and has yet to be found in the vastness of the sea. (On Thursday, the Pentagon said it was expanding the search field by redeploying a destroyer westward toward the Indian Ocean.)

The hype cycle will continue as long as the search drags on for the missing jumbo jet and its 239 passengers and crew, who were on a red-eye from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing when the plane vanished early Saturday morning.

“I call it the clue du jour,” said Mark Rosenker, a former chairman of the National Safety Transportation Board who has investigated a number of aviation accidents. “In reality, it’s not unusual to have a great deal of misinformation during the early phases of an accident investigation.”

Part of the problem is that, so far, it appears the hulking 210-foot-long jetliner and its planeload of people, most of whom probably have cellphones, has completely vanished — a thought that’s difficult to swallow in today’s connected age.

And the lack of twisted wreckage has made it difficult to rule out, or in, any of a number of thus-far equally plausible theories.

On the other hand, if the plane’s transponder was really turned off at the same time the aircraft took a hard turn back over Malaysia, as some early information suggested, that would be highly suspicious and could point to some kind of foul play.

Rosenker noted that so far, military radar data suggest that the plane took a purposeful turn away from its intended path, veering toward the west and back over Malaysia toward the Strait of Malacca and the Andaman Sea. Whether the plane was diverted for some nefarious purpose, or whether the pilots were attempting to make an emergency landing elsewhere, remains an open question — assuming that this information doesn’t turn out to be yet another false lead.

In the vacuum of information, the media, pundits and even armchair aviation enthusiasts have waded into the fray, offering theories and even helping to crowd-source the sifting of reams of satellite imagery for signs of wreckage.

Compounding the confusion: Malaysian authorities have been inconsistent in coordinating the response and releasing information, with conflicting data being generated almost daily.

That’s led to broadcast images showing frustrated relatives screaming at government and airlines officials. And it’s raised international tensions significantly, particularly with the Chinese, whose citizens made up the vast majority of passengers on the plane.

“They’ve been as transparent as sea fog. The people responsible for disseminating official information have been less than credible,” Rosenker said of the Malaysian government.

As for the wild hypotheses, he said, “the only thing I would take off the table is that little green men came down onto the flight deck and pulled the plane up into space. That is how broad this investigation must be.”